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A comment on Carl Braun on Communicating Like a Grown-Up (2016). Parent comment

Re:Carl Braun on Communicating Like a Grown-Up (2016) by Animats on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @09:53PM (#35366749)
The US military makes this work by running everyone through standardized training and exercises. Few companies do that. Historically, IBM and the Bell System did. Not many others.

The military definitely standardizes the details. Anybody who's been in the military knows this. Here's the US Navy/USMC guide to formatting correspondence and memos.[1] They use Times New Roman. (Upgraded in 2018 from Courier New.)

Consistency in the details means that the failure modes are known. This is a big help when you have to bring everything you need.

[1] https://www.marines.mil/portals/1/Publications/SECNAV%20M%20...

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Re:Carl Braun on Communicating Like a Grown-Up (2016) by dredmorbius on Thursday March 30, 2023 @03:43PM (#35377870)
Railroads (in the 19th / early 20th centuries), AT&T, Du Pont, General Electric, and other large multi-division type corporations both created and inculcated standards of communication and information management, dating back to paper-based systems.

James Beniger and JoAnne Yates are amongst two scholars who've studied and written on this in detail. Beniger's book, The Control Revolution (1986) particularly.

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